


the wind through the vines

by plingo_kat



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Daud in retirement, Fluff, Low Chaos Daud, M/M, bad flute playing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-15
Updated: 2015-07-15
Packaged: 2018-04-09 10:45:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4345559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plingo_kat/pseuds/plingo_kat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Whalers create a band, plants grow better with music, and Daud picks up the flute. But very, very badly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the wind through the vines

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [no one can ever follow](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2172390) by [taywen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/taywen/pseuds/taywen). 



> Mostly the fault of triska, who chatted me about Daud playing the flute VERY BADLY as he attempted to learn a woodwind instrument. See also taywen's lovely, lovely vineyard au.
> 
> In order to get the _full effect_ of this fic, I suggest that you watch the youtube vid of the titanic theme on a badly played flute before/as you are reading. It really sets the mood.
> 
> I'M SORRY.

o.

“Look,” Daud says irritably when the third botany book appears on his desk. “If whoever is leaving these doesn’t stop _right now_...”

“Yes?” Hobson says. When Daud tires to pin him with a glare he serenely scrapes up another spoonful of porridge.

“I’m going volunteer them for the next training match with Corvo,” Daud says.

Rinaldo, who has just walked into the room, turns on his heel and walks right back out again. Thomas coughs a little into his cup of tea.

And that, Daud thinks, is that.

i.

Corvo has been gone for five days when Daud hears the pipes. He’s in a black mood, and only partially because he dreams of a man in a skull’s mask dripping blood into the soil of the grapevines. When he stalks to the door with a scowl, Rinaldo trails off with a lonely whistle.

“Oh,” he says weakly. “Hello, Daud.”

“What,” Daud says. He takes in the entire picture: Rinaldo, sleeves rolled up with a set of silver pipes, Jenkins and Dmitri and Aedan standing nearby with a hound and three sheep, another pair of Whalers that transverse away as soon as his eye passes over them. 

“What,” he tries again, “is going on?”

“Um,” Rinaldo says.

“He’s playing to the plants, sir,” Dmitri says. “To help them grow.”

Daud stares, astounded. That is the stupidest thing he’s ever heard, and he’s worked with and for some truly lackwitted nobles.

“It’s a proven natural law, you see,” Dmitri continues. Aedan is inching away from him, eyes wide. “I’ve got a book about it if you want to learn more.”

“...Fine,” Daud says. He’s going to go back to his room and sleep. Hopefully Corvo will be back by the time he wakes and he can forget about all of this.

As he leaves, he can hear somebody heaving a sigh.

“You’re a brave man, Dmitri,” Rinaldo says.

“I thought you were dead for sure,” Aedan says.

“Daud _likes_ to read,” Dmitri replies, baffled.

Daud closes his eyes. Sleep. When he gets up again Corvo will be back, the Whalers will be terrorized, and he will have fantastic, bed-breaking sex.

 

The room is empty when Daud opens his eyes. He closes them again and, in a moment of weakness, activates his void gaze; nobody is in the room next to his, and no figure appears with a bright yellow splotch close to his heart. A slow count to thirty is the only amount of wallowing he allows himself.

There is a book on the bedstand. _Natural Behaviors of Flora in Response to Stimuli_ , by some natural philosopher or other -- Daud is vaguely relieved that Sokolov’s name isn’t printed. He leaves it there.

 

Two days later he picks it up; somebody (Daud supsects Dmitri) has marked a section with a scrap of cloth. The page opens with a chart of growth patterns as compared to amounts of time spent in the presence of music, and Daud almost barks a laugh. Only a natural philosopher would have thought of something so incredibly inane, and only his Whalers would see it and think of using it as an acceptable guideline to help grow grapes.

Rinaldo plays his pipes every day right before supper, when the sun tints the sky purple-orange and the oppressive heat of the day lightens. He’s a tolerable musician, what somebody more charitable than Daud might actually call talented, which is why he hasn’t yet been shot. Today though, he is accompanied by what sounds like a… guitar?

The scene that greets him when he leans out of his window is so surreal that he has to check for the blue-black of the void. There are no writhing shadows, however, nor levitating books, so he must not be dreaming.

It just makes things more baffling. Rinaldo with a set of pipes to his lips has almost become commonplace, but Thomas standing beside him strumming a lyre is a surprise.

“What,” Daud says, a strong sense of deja-vu sweeping over him, “are you doing?”

“...Helping our grapes grow?” Thomas offers, gingerly.

Daud stares at him. “I expected better from you, Thomas,” he says finally, and retreats back into the house. He catches a glimpse of Thomas’ slumped form out of the corner of his eye.

“He’s in a temper, is all,” Dmitri says from behind him. “Don’t mind his snapping.”

“We’re supposed to be vintners,” Thomas says.

“He’ll come ‘round,” Dmitri says.

Daud squashes any hint of guilt. Serenading plants. _Ridiculous_. He shouldn’t be the one feeling ashamed of himself. Thomas should know better.

ii.

It gets worse. Every day another Whaler joins the ranks of musicians: Hobson plays a mean cornet, Jenkins taps at a triangle, and Dmitri hits a cowbell while Aedan holds it up for him. The most terrible thing is that Daud has no valid reason to dismiss them -- the music is pleasant, sometimes soothing and sometimes lively, and the Whalers are their own, not bound to Daud by anything but loyalty and respect.

The last straw is when Corvo finally returns.

The Whalers have been making their way through popular Gristol pieces; today it’s the ‘Drunken Whaler.’ Halfway through the chorus the music jangles to a discordant stop and it’s enough to leave Daud curious. By the time he walks to the door though, the music has started up again: this time with a lovely, rich-voiced tenor singing along.

It’s _Corvo_.

Daud is almost certain that he loses time, struck blind and dumb by sheer, unmitigated rage. This is a level of betrayal he never expected.

 _”You,”_ he says hoarsely when he gains his voice back. It can’t be heard by the musicians -- they’ve reached the part about shooting the drunken whaler through the heart, and on every ‘shoot’ Dmitri hits his cowbell with a disgusting amount of enthusiasm.

Corvo finally sees him in the doorway and _smiles_. Daud can count on one hand the number of times he has seen Corvo truly happy -- his anger all but disappears, though he clings to at least a veneer of irritation.

“You’re back,” Daud says when the song finishes, and then contemplates if cutting off a limb or disemboweling himself would have been a less of a blow to his pride. 

Corvo nods to the musicians, who look between him and Daud and transverse away one by one.

“We’re going to talk about this,” Daud says as Corvo advances.

“You were supposed to scare some sense into them,” he gasps as Corvo bites his way down his neck.

“F-fuck,” he whimpers when Corvo breaches him, biting down on his lip hard enough to draw blood. Corvo’s hand clamps tight on the back of his neck, pushing him against the mattress as the other wraps around his cock. “Corvo--”

“Shh,” Corvo says, lips pressed to his ear. The hotness of his breath makes Daud shiver even as he moans from the friction of Corvo inside him, and he pants helplessly into the sheets as Corvo moves his hips in tight circles, teasing.

“If you object to my singing,” Corvo breaks off when his voice wavers, thrusting harder once, twice, before stilling. “You can -- nn -- do it yourself.”

Daud can’t answer: arches, pushes back, tries to get Corvo deeper. He says nothing but Corvo’s name for the rest of the night.

iii.

Corvo doesn’t sing again and no other Whalers join the grapevine musical group, so Daud resolves to put it all behind him. This is ruined when a silver flute appears on his desk.

It sits there for two weeks. Each night Daud catches a glimpse of it before he goes to bed, and each time he is reminded in a flash of the Heart, left ominously by his bedside in Corvo’s mistaken gesture of courtship.

On the fifteenth day the Whalers go on their semi-monthly outings to the city. Corvo disappears after breakfast, and after a few hours idling around the suddenly too-quiet house Daud ends up back in his room.

“I’m not doing it,” he says to the flute, lying on the dark, slightly warped wood of his desk. It gleams at him in the midmorning light.

“Void, no,” Daud says as he picks it up. “I have no idea how to even play a flute.”

He does have an idea, though. It can’t be that hard: you blow across the mouthpiece and press down on the keys. He scours his memory for the fingerings -- he’s watched plenty of orchestras, though mostly from the rafters as he prepared to assassinate a target. There was a common one, the one they used to tune; it only had two fingers…?

He purses his lips experimentally. There is a wheezy whistling noise.

He holds it away from his face and glares. That was worse than just blowing across glass bottles. A quick glance outside still shows nobody nearby, but he closes his door just in case.

“All right,” he growls at the flute. “If Rinaldo can do it, you can’t be that difficult.”

The sounds Daud can coax from the flute have progressed to slightly asthmatic wavering tones when Corvo appears behind him.

“...You’re playing,” Corvo says.

“Outsider’s--!” The flute shrieks as Daud exhales harshly, whirling around to face the other man. The door is still closed; Daud has no idea how Corvo made it inside.

“Do you like it?” Corvo’s face is composed but for lilt of a question in his eyes, the slightly worried cast of his mouth.

“Sure,” Daud says in the face of his stare. “Although I’d like it more if I didn’t sound like a dying cat when I tried to play it.”

“...You’re good,” Corvo says, blatantly lying.

Daud snorts. “I’m terrible,” he says. “It’s to be expected, I have no experience playing the flute.”

“I’ve heard worse,” Corvo insists, as if Daud is a simpering noblewoman who will throw a temper tantrum if her tutor doesn’t praise her efforts. It’s… endearing, if Daud is honest.

“Who else didn’t leave for the city,” he says instead of voicing the thought. When Corvo just looks blank, he activates his void gaze.

A yellow figure is doubled over on the roof, shaking slightly. When Daud transverses up there, Rulfio yelps, looks at him, and doubles over again.

Corvo appears next to them with a _thwip_ of displaced air.

“...Be careful,” he says. Rulfio shakes harder and Daud’s fist tightens -- Corvo suddenly grips his wrist.

 _”Careful,”_ he says again, and Daud realizes that he was talking about the flute Daud is still holding.

At this point Rulfio is practically crying. He transverses away with a strangled noise, appearing in the middle of the vineyard and then blinking away for the second time.

“I’m going to kill him,” Daud says, calm. “And then I’m going to kill you.”

Corvo’s hand tightens on Daud’s wrist. When Daud looks at him, he’s grinning.

“You can try,” he purrs. Daud realizes that he’s _turned on_. Of course, violence and Daud accepting his gifts is practically foreplay to the man.

Daud yanks his hand free.

“I’m going to practice,” he says. “Go away.”

He treasures the look on Corvo’s face as he transverses once, twice, three times to the edge of the property, until he’s out of sight of the house. No doubt later he’ll pay for the cheek, but it’s more than worth it.

iv.

When Daud has improved enough to perform with the rest of the Whalers, they throw an impromptu party. Kent and Rulfio and Aedan cook while the rest of the Whalers mill around, producing bottles and dice and cards from their individual stashes. There is a neat pile of instruments in the corner, ready for when the group will play.

“Outsider’s toenails,” Daud says when he sees them.

A hound bounds up to him, tail whipping back and forth. A branch is held between its teeth with -- is that a bone charm on the end?

Daud takes the stick and throws it; the hound bounds off again. He doesn’t want to know.

Corvo appears beside him. “Ready?”

 _”Outsider’s eyes,”_ Daud says. “Stop asking questions.”

Corvo stays silent.

“You’re singing, aren’t you?” Daud demands.

Corvo nods.

“Good,” Daud says. “Fine.”

They stand there, shoulders brushing, until Rulfio calls that the food is ready. There is a mass rush of Whalers until Hobson barks at them to _get in line, idiots, where’s your discipline?_ Daud strolls to the head of the line, Corvo following a half-step behind.

“Here you go, sir,” Aedan says, ladling a generous slop of the mixed meat and vegetables into Daud’s bowl.

“Be sure to rinse your mouth out before you play,” Hobson advises, deadpan. “You don’t want to have to clean out meat from the inside of your flute.”

Daud glares. Corvo nods like Hobson is dispensing sage advice; he is going to have bruises after their next sparring session, Daud vows.

When the sun is flirting with the horizon, Rinaldo pick up his pipes and takes up his normal position facing the grapevines. At least, Daud thinks, they will have their backs to the rest of the Whalers. That’s something.

Corvo all but drags him to the growing group of musicians. 

“The Drunken Whaler,” he says. Of course Corvo would have been listening to what Daud had been practicing, he thinks with a surge of what he’ll deny is fondness. The man doesn’t know what restraint is. Or privacy, at least when applied to other people.

The Whalers begin, and on the second measure Corvo’s voice rings out, smooth and surprisingly sweet. Daud fingers along and listens until they reach the chorus, then presses his lips together and exhales on a prayer.

Slightly wobbly flute notes drift across the vineyard bathed in the Serkonan sunset. Corvo turns his head to sing the next line directly at Daud, and for a moment everything is gilded in gold.


End file.
